In certain projects, the best lens design choice is not to design. While high volume production costs savings for a custom design are considerable, there are times when delivery time requirements don’t permit the use of a custom design, or when an existing lens used in high volume for a different application can be re-purposed.
This process of finding the right lens starts with an online search for off-the-shelf products followed by requesting Zemax ‘black box’ files. These Zemax files allow the optical engineer to truly model lens performance for a specific application.
Below is a list of 10 optics suppliers we survey when looking for an off-the-shelf lens.
Updated March 2020, we have created a search engine so you can search over 4,000 lenses from 12 different suppliers.
Need a custom lens design? Click here to learn more about our custom optical engineering services.
